'We can run almost anything you can think of,' Sun government vice president John Marselle said.

The $1 million center's resources include several conference rooms and labs, Sun Fire servers, Sun Ray thin clients, demonstration kiosks, four 52-inch plasma monitors, whiteboards and 12T of storage area network space. The two proof-of-concept labs are on different subnets. All rooms, and the thin clients, are secured through Java card access.

Solaris 9 and Sun's Secure Network Access Platform support the center's resources; the Solaris 10 operating system will be launched Nov. 15.

An earlier Sun executive briefing center in Menlo Park, Calif., pioneered the idea of interoperability demos, Marselle said, 'and then we decided to set up multiple centers closer to customers. We try to efficiently tie together our technicians and our partners' technicians to prove out concepts.'

Anton Mahowald, the center's systems engineer, said users can test applications running on one to 24 CPUs. A T1 Internet connection is available, plus a virtual private network link to the Menlo Park center for testing the use of remote resources. 'As long as the connection is clean, it runs like it's local,' Mahowald said.

Online submissions of agency test plans will take two to four weeks to turn around. 'The length of time depends on the complexity and logistics,' center manager Kathy Sebuck said. Sebuck can be reached at 703-204-4168 or by e-mail at kathy.sebuck@sun.com.